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Not that the reports are all that thorough. The FBI are all over Sara, following her around everywhere she goes, and my men have to hang back, being careful not to attract attention. Aside from the obvious danger to them, it wouldn’t be good for Sara if the FBI knew I’m still interested in her. Thanks to our hackers getting into Ryson’s files, I know what Sara told them, and I don’t want to undermine any aspect of her story. The agents have to believe I got bored with her and let her go for good; otherwise, they’ll hide her away, and likely charge her with aiding and abetting. The only reason they haven’t already done the latter is Sara’s family’s connections. Between her dead husband’s media contacts and her parents’ lawyer friends with Washington ties, this case has the potential to make national headlines—something a lot of highly placed individuals, Henderson included, are desperate to avoid.
For now, Sara is safe, but she won’t be if she gets caught lying.
In any case, while she was away, the FBI found all the cameras and listening devices I placed in her house, and after she appeared so fortuitously following her mother’s accident, it occurred to them to do a thorough sweep of her parents’ house as well. So all I have to go on now are the FBI notes our hackers send me, and the generic reports about her movements from the men I hired to follow her. It’s not nearly enough, and it eats at me, the need to know what she’s doing, how she’s feeling, what she’s thinking.
If I was obsessed with her before, now that I’ve had her with me all these months, it’s more like a physical addiction.
“Just fucking go get her already,” Anton mutters, wiping the blood off his lip after I punch him far too savagely for a training session. “Or at least take a chill pill. Seriously, man, can’t you go a few days without getting your fucking rocks off?”
For that, I land a hit directly to his solar plexus, and when he’s bent over, gasping like a landed fish, I grab a weighted pack and go for a run to avoid killing him on the spot. I know my friend is right—my temper’s been at the boiling point, and I’ve been taking it out on the guys—but that doesn’t lessen my rage and frustration. I haven’t slept a full night since… well, since Sara’s accident, come to think of it. The nightmares about my family’s deaths—the ones that had all but disappeared thanks to Sara—are back, only now they’re accompanied by an even more terrifying dream in which I lose her.
It’s my nightly reality, and every time I wake up, covered with cold sweat, I reach for the most recent report on her, reading it over and over again to reassure myself that it was just a dream, that my ptichka is alive and well without me.
That given what I’m about to do, she’s far safer at home than she would be by my side.
It’s this last thought that enables me to keep going, to resist the urge to do exactly what Anton said and steal her from under the Feds’ noses again. I can do it—their agents are no match for me and my team—but Sara’s mother is still far from well and Sara would hate me if I took her away from her family so soon. Besides, I have an entirely different goal in mind, and to achieve it, I have to stay on this path, no matter how difficult it might be.
I have to believe that ultimately, it will all be worth it.
16
Sara
One week without Peter.
It feels unreal, like a dream from which I’m waiting to wake up. Or maybe it’s the fact that I don’t sleep properly that gives my days this strange, dream-like quality. In some ways, it’s like I entered a time machine—I’m in a hospital, waiting for a loved one to recover from a debilitating car accident. Only that time, it was George who was the patient, and he never made it out of his coma.
Mom’s prognosis is much better. The doctors did a good job patching her up, and her wounds didn’t get infected. She’s still immobilized with all the casts, and she may never regain full use of her left arm—too many nerves and tendons were damaged there—but once her broken legs heal, with sufficient physical therapy, she should be able to walk again.
Dad is over the moon, both about Mom’s prognosis and the fact that I’m home. Every time he enters her room and finds me sitting by her bedside, his mouth quivers, like he’s about to cry, but instead, he breaks out in a joyous smile.
“I keep thinking you’re going to disappear,” he confesses when we sit down to eat dinner in the hospital cafeteria. “That if I turn away for a second, you’ll go poof.” He uncurls his hands in a magician-like move. “There one moment, gone the next.”
